Qualcomm to sell mobile spectrum in the UK

There will soon be some more spectrum up for grabs in the UK, which will doubtless please mobile operators who are desperate for as much bandwidth as they can grab.

The spectrum comes courtesy of Qualcomm, which has just announced its intention to sell. This is L-Band spectrum which the company picked up back in May 2008, and it’s suitable for 4G mobile surfing – seven years ago it cost just over £8 million, but you can expect it to fetch considerably more than that now.

Network operators will need all the bandwidth they can get as we approach 2020, which has been the year pinpointed when the UK will face a “capacity crunch” and an overload of mobile data usage (what with the increasing number of handsets in the hands of the public, and increased usage of bandwidth-heavy activities like video streaming).

V3.co.uk reported that Qualcomm said in a statement: “The European Commission recently voted for the release of L-Band (1452-1492MHz) spectrum throughout the European Union for use as Supplemental Downlink (SDL). Qualcomm believes that SDL can be key to meeting the increase of 4G mobile data traffic globally that is downlink centric.